Currency

Exchange Rate API

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Our exchange rate API is a rapid, reliable currency conversion tool that gives you access to accurate rates of world currencies. We provide a developer-friendly JSON API that can be easily plugged into any mobile application, e-commerce stores, websites, currency converter tools etc. We supply 152 live currency rates, from traditional currencies, crypto-currencies and even precious metals. Our exchange rate data comes from multiple sources including central banks and brokers from across the globe. The rates API is updated in real time, every 1 minute, and is accurate and reliable.

So, how does this work? You sign up for an account, paid plans start from $9.99 a month, and we supply an API key. You then use this key to make a request to our exchange rate API, and we provide the latest foreign exchange rate. It's that simple. To make this even easier, we have created various SDKs, in PHP, NodeJs, that you can plug into your application in minutes. We also have created a Postman collection which points directly to our exchange rate API so you just need to add your API key and away you go.

We have created very detailed and easy-to-read documentation for our currency API. With one click, you can view various different ways to make requests to our currency exchange rate service. We supply code examples in languages such as:

  • cURL
  • PHP
  • NodeJs
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Java
  • GoLang / Go
  • jQuery
  • Javascript

It's as simple as copying and pasting these examples and you can test our API service in seconds. Developers also have the ability to get an XML response instead of JSON. By passing a parameter, our application will respond in your selected format. By default, our API service is a JSON API and therefore responds in JSON.

Not only can you view the latest currency rates, but you can also get historical data for every currency. Our history endpoint gives developers access to over a hundred different currency pairs' historical data going back to the year 2000. This is not just forex currencies, we also include this historical data with crypto-currencies, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and much more. To access this currency exchange rate data going all the way back to the year 2000, developers can just make a request to the history endpoint and supply the base currency and the date. Our JSON API will then respond with the rates at the end of the selected day (GMT timezone).

If you need more than a single day of currency data, you can use our timeframe endpoint. This endpoint is only available on our highest plan, the professional plan, and it's extremely powerful. Developers can access up to 365 days of exchange rate data in one single request. All that's needed is the API key and a range of dates you want to get the data from our exchange rate API. This can then be put into graphs, spreadsheets or other creative ways to visualise the data.


Get Live Exchange Rates

Accurate and reliable exchange rates are an important part of everyday life. Live exchange rates play a huge part to help buyers and sellers online to get the most accurate rates. It's commonplace these days for e-commerce platforms to offer their products in multiple currencies so customers all around the world can shop at their stores. Developers can easily plug our API data into e-commerce frameworks like Magento, Woocommerce, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix etc so their stores can offer multiple currencies.

It's not only e-commerce shops that benefit from live exchange rates, we have a range of customers using our exchange rate data in a number of creative ways, including:

  • Currency conversion / currency converter mobile apps
  • Invoicing tools
  • Admin panels displaying live exchange rate
  • Graphs comparing different currency rates
  • Historical foreign exchange rate graphs
  • Cryptocurrency wallets
  • and loads more.

No matter if your project is small or big, there really are endless opportunities to use currency data from our API's. Our service handles millions of requests a month and our professional plan comes with 10,000,000 monthly requests.


Access JSON Currency Exchange Rates

By default, all of our API endpoints return JSON. This includes the rates, convert, history, timeframe endpoints. However, you can specify an output parameter when making a request to our exchange rate JSON api. This output parameter can be set to either JSON or XML. It won't matter if the request succeeded or returned an error, the output will be in the format you have specified. An example would look something like &output=JSON or &output=XML.

For more information about this output parameter when calling our exchange rate json api, you can check out our documentation page. If you are using one of our SDK's, you can also supply an output format using the setOutput() method. For more info on this, please visit the SDK homepage. When using our Postman collection, you can simply adjust the output variable when making the request to our exchange rate json API.

Once a developer has the response, in either JSON or XML, they can use this with pretty much any application. Most programming languages will be able to parse either of these two and turn them into code the application can understand.


Developers - Try Our Free foreign exchange rates API

We offer both a paid and a FREE foreign exchange rates API. On the paid side, plans start from just $9.99 per month and go up to $74.99 per month. You can also pay annually, which will give you 2 months free (you pay for 10 months).

With our free plan, you only get access to our /rates endpoint which is a free foreign exchange rates api that's updated every 60 minutes. We have a monthly limit of 1250 API requests to this free JSON API which supplies real time reliable currency data.

Note: We do not allow any commercial use when using our free API plan. Please see our terms for more information.

To get started using our free API plan, follow these steps:

  • Head to our pricing section on our homepage, and click that you want to use the free currency API plan.
  • Signup using a valid email and confirm that you will not be using it for commercial use.
  • You will then be supplied an API key and you can view this in your account section.
  • Now you are able to use our free foreign exchange rates API.

FAQs on our Exchange Rates API


Although most requests made to our application request a JSON response, we also have the ability to return XML from our JSON API. This option is available on all subscription plans.

Its super easy to change the output of the response when calling our exchange rate XML API. All that's needed is adding or modifying the output parameter in the URL and as long as you apply a correct value and a valid API key, you will get the response your looking for.

An example request to our rates API would look like this:

https://currencyapi.net/api/v1/rates?key=YOUR_API_KEY&output=XML

This will return reliable currency exchange rate data from our exchange rate XML API. Developers will then be able to parse this XML response and convert it into something your application can read.

Getting started with our currency exchange rate API can be done in seconds. We supply example exchange rate code so developers can get reliable currency data straight away.

So which languages do you supply example code? Python, NodeJs, GoLang / Go, PHP, cUrl, Ruby, Java, jQuery and Javascript.

To see how this works, head over to our documentation page and using the tabs, select which language you want to see the example exchange rate code. Within minutes, you will have access to real time, accurate and reliable exchange rate data. Because our application is a JSON API by default, it doesn't matter which programming language or framework your application uses, your application will be able to work with the response easily.

We also supply example code when using our premade packages in both PHP and NodeJs. Using composer or NPM you get access to our premade methods making it even easier to interact with our API.

We provide various endpoints where developers can access different types of currency data. Our most frequently used endpoint, the rates endpoint, is a live currency exchange rates API for 152 world currencies, cryptocurrencies and precious metals.

Our foreign exchange rate data is updated in real time every 1 minute, depending on the plan. This gives companies and developers access to live currency exchange rate data which can easily be plugged into your application. Our reliable currency data comes from central banks across the globe providing accurate rates in real time.

While the currency data on our live currency exchange rates API is updated every 1 minute, this data is only available to customers on the Professional Plan. For a breakdown of each plan, see below:

  • Professional Plan (updated every 1 minute)
  • StartUp Plan (updated every 10 minutes)
  • Essential & Free Plan (updated every 60 minutes)

CurrencyApi.net has various subscription plans to get reliable currency exchange rate data. Our paid plans start at $9.99 a month (Essential Plan) and go up to $74.99 a month (Professional Plan). However, we do offer an API for exchange rates free.

Our free API for exchange rates is completely free-of-charge and works exactly the same as our paid options when getting the live exchange rates. This is a great option for personal projects looking to get started with free currency data. On the free plan, users are allowed to make up to 1250 monthly requests. The foreign exchange rate data is only updated every 60 minutes on our free exchange rates API plan.

We also restrict access to our free API for exchange rates to personal use. This means we do not allow companies to use or any commercial use when using our free API plan. For more information regarding this, please check out our terms of use.

Not only do we supply real time currency conversion rates, we also provide historical data for world currencies going back all the way to the year 2000. That's right, over 20 years of historical exchange rate API data from accurate and reliable sources, including central banks.

Of course, some currencies have not been around since 2000, so we can only supply the data we do have based on the currency. For example, Bitcoin, Litecoin or other cryptocurrencies, won't have data back in the year 2000 because these currencies did not exist then.

To use our API to get historical exchange rates, you have to be on a paid plan and signed up to either the StartUp Plan or the Professional Plan. We have two endpoints available for getting this historical currency exchange rate data:

  • /history
  • /timeframe

For more information regarding these endpoints, please check out documentation out, and don't forget to always send your API key in the request.